About The Project :Empowering Women Local Council Candidates for Inclusive Local Governance

Objectives of the project:

To empower 90 women in the Nile Delta to run
for local councils & to be pioneers of inclusion and strong local
governance in their communities.

The program is mainly composed of the
following activities:

A. Capacity Building Training Sessions

Divided into 3 groups of 30 participants, each
group will attend three workshops each month, plus one community forum for a
total of five months. Workshops will feature the following themes (one module
for each month):

Local Governance: overview of legal framework
and the role of parliament, ministries, local executive officials, as well as
the responsibilities of local councils.

Participatory Planning & Budgeting:
Participants will be taught about the planning & budgeting process and how
to conduct participatory budgeting and planning.

Oversight & Project Management:
Participants will be taught about how projects should be managed, as and
subsequently how to conduct oversight of local development projects.

Community Service: After an introduction to
the importance of volunteerism and service in community development and a brief
planning period, participants will conduct small-scale community service events
in groups of 3-4 as a way to conclude the training sessions. Participants will
begin to tangibly take ownership over local development, set a positive example
for their fellow community members and take a leadership role, demonstrating
their qualifications as local council members. The Community Forum at the end
of the month will display the results of each event in a Community Service
Fair.

B. Community Forums:

The fourth training session of each month will
be designated as a Community Forum where participants take turns presenting the
knowledge they have gained in that module to community members.

C. Community Participatory Planning Workshops

Building off of the relations established
between participants and community members in the Community Forums, workshops
will act as a practical component to the project, bringing together
participants and community members to simulate participatory planning &
budgeting processes. Ten workshops will be held each month, over the course of
four months, and each workshop led by 2-3 participants (all participants will
lead at least one workshop, some may do more if desired). It is expected that
around 50-100 community members attend each workshop. The budgets and plans that are produced in
each workshop will be posted in a public space for all community members to
view.

D.Visit to Ministry of Local Development

One of the successful forms of stakeholder
engagement has been arranging for program participants to meet national
decision makers, giving both parties an opportunity to build relationships
which is the first step in creating partnerships in the development process.

E.Focus Groups

The purpose of the focus groups is to gauge
community members knowledge, perceptions and expectations of local government,
which will be used to provide valuable information about their communities to
project participants, the women who ultimately will represent local government
as elected members of local councils. A consultant, who is an expert in
qualitative research will facilitate each focus group. Focus groups will have five
community members representing a certain stakeholder group (i.e. agricultural
workers, women, the disabled, etc.). In order to encompass the range of
stakeholder groups that make up local communities, focus groups will be held
four times throughout the project, each time with four stakeholder groups,
totaling 16 focus groups over the course of the project.

Photo Gallery :Empowering Women Local Council Candidates for Inclusive Local Governance